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Do you think tipping should eradicated? Photo: The Chronicle/Eric Luse

This is the second half of our interview with restaurateur Jay Porter, who wrote a definitive treatise on running a tip-free restaurant in San Diego, and why he thinks his model is a very good one. Porter is also in the process of opening a new restaurant in Oakland named Salsipuedes.

PL: Let’s say a new restaurant owner read everything you wrote about running a tip-free restaurant, read this interview and was totally inspired to do it. What would be your advice and caveats?

Jay Porter: The number one thing is to make sure you just not accept tips at all. There’s a huge difference between the Chez Panisse model and what we did. It’s everything. The important distinction is that there is no voluntary component at all. Diners are not allowed to choose how much, or leave an extra tip. As a guest, you’re either paying for this thing, or the restaurant doesn’t deliver the service and you don’t pay. That is what fundamentally alters the whole dynamic.

What I’ve seen with people who have flirted with this idea is that on the first day you do it, there’s a guest in the dining room who wants to pay more. And you’ve got a staff member who says something like “They want to give me more money and I want more money. Why are we not letting them give more money?” And that’s what I mean when I say we’re not cut out, as humans, to value long-term benefit over short-term gratification. To make it work, it has to be a really deep, long term commitment that can withstand this daily pressure.

Tips are collected at a market in San Francisco. Photo: Mike Kepka/The Chronicle

How did you answer that staff member?

My answer to that question when it came up was this: Because we’re professionals, and we charge for what we do. We set a price for what we do, we take pride in our work, and we don’t accept more money than the price we charge. That’s the job I want to have, and that’s the job I want to you to have. If you want a different job, that’s cool, but you need to do it elsewhere.

The part about having a long-term commitment and denying oneself a couple bucks in the short term is, from what I’ve seen, the big challenge. At our restaurant, we knew going into it that it would be a thing we’d stick with for a long time. Not that we were unwilling to change our mind, but we were committed to running our business in a way that we saw more fair. We did it for the pooling.

How do you feel about tipping in other aspects of society?

I’m not Mr. Pink. [laughing] … I’m not really emotionally invested in whether or not a barista or bellboy deserves a tip. I try to ascertain what the social norm is and follow it. But I think that any industry where tipping becomes an important part of the revenue stream or an important part of the wage aspect is playing a sucker’s bet. It seems great and will get our clients to pay more and then they’ll handle paying our servers more. But from an industry side, we’re losing the ability to create, to shape the product and service in a way that might be best for everybody.

I don’t want to sound like I’m anti-employee. I think the business owner’s job is to create an environment in which each employee can contribute his gifts. But that can only happen if the employees are not required to run a second business extracting money unrelated to the product from the guests. And so, if you run a salon or pedicab business or whatever, and the company is going to ask customers to pay extra to create good wages for employees, you’re now putting your employees in a position where they have to run two businesses — both the business and their own financial needs. I don’t understand how that business can fulfill its potential if some part of what the team has to do is run a second business.

How does the no-tip thing work on the bar side?

I never figured that out. I’m probably the wrong guy to figure it out. I didn’t really like being in the hard liquor business, so maybe somebody who really likes the bar business will figure it out. In the restaurant, I had certain goals about achieving a certain experience. I found that the kind of mutually respectful, no-tipping environment was not possible in the same way with liquor. I don’t know the answer to that.

Were there any issues with taxes or anything like that?

No, it just becomes part of the stream. It’s subject to California state sales tax. It’s just another revenue stream. We treated it like a tip pool, and it was divided amongst employees. But it did make it easier when a guest asked for an explanation. We would explain that that basically all this money goes into a pool and is divided amongst everyone who works here. And they’re like, “Oh that’s cool, I thought that was what was already happening.”

How much did profits go up?

Revenue went up substantially. It was basically what kicked off our growth. We were struggling in this 50-seat space and we couldn’t seem to get over the hump. I want to say it was October or November when we did the switch [to tip-free] and by March we were booming. The servers were making more money even though they were taking seven percent less. We went to 21 to 18 percent tips and then they were kicking a quarter of their tips to the back — and they were still doing better after a couple months because revenue was up. We starting making a profit, and I started making a profit. We started getting such long waits that it spurred us to move to a bigger location.

Switching subjects for the last question: What is the value of chefs and restaurateurs writing?

Oh man. I could read Matt Straus’ stuff any day of the week. His blog is so amazing. It makes me feel really connected.

You know, my friend Jair Tellez from MeroToro in Mexico City says that all we have to sell are our intentions. I think that whatever way we have, as restaurant people, to communicate our intentions is good. So if we’re effective at writing, fantastic. If someone takes really good pictures, or does art, that’s fantastic. That communicates what they’re about. But it’s not necessary. Some people can do it all with cooking, with their wine selections, with their hospitality. I really agree with that sentiment.

You serve 500 people a night. Not every molecule on every plate is going to be perfect. But what we do, what we are communicating, are our intentions and what kind of experience we want you to have. If the guest understands that and enjoys those intentions, the guest will have a great experience.